Archive for January, 2008
Friday, January 18th, 2008
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Here is a quick and easy persuasion model, that with little effort can become natural and easy for you. Allowing you to influence and change the minds of those around you.
There are many variations of this model, but here is an excellent one for beginners and effective for advanced persuasion artists too.
1. Get rapport (get their trust) by becoming as much like them as you possibly can.
2. Elicit their criteria by asking the right questions. Asking the right questions, like “what’s important to you about X?” elicits a very high emotional state.
3. Anchor that good feeling state to what state to you or what you want them to take action on.
4. Use embedded commands so it’s clear to their unconscious mind where you are taking them.
5. Use hypnotic language patterns so that your suggestions are received with no resistance.
6. Ask for the action while triggering the anchor you created earlier.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted in Hypnosis, Language Patterns, NLP, Rapport, Sales, covert hypnosis, persuasion | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 18th, 2008
This is case study 6 of The Great Rapport Experiment of 2008: Matching and Mirroring Edition. This is an experiment in persuasion to see what methods of influence work best in the real world. These are all true stories and all subjects are real.
As a result of being in sales for so long I can read body language well. Often I can look at a person and size em up quite well.
Subject comes in, a young guy mid twenties. Looks like a salesman of some type. Most salespeople can always sniff out other salespeople. I’m suspicious he’s a competitor, spying on me on his lunch break.
NOTE: In sales, the people who are hardest to persuade are the ones who have some type of hidden agenda. That agenda can be as simple as they really aren’t meeting with you to buy, instead they buying their friend and they want to be sure their friend is giving them a good deal or this agenda can be as complex as it’s really someone from your competition spying.
These type of people have a wall up, and it takes a stronger strategy to gain rapport of they just aren’t worth the time.
Even though I knew this guy was a joke, I still proceeded with the experiment.
I started mirroring the way he was standing. He point his feet outward, so I pointed my feet outward. Then he has one hand in a pocket, I did the same. I did use the strategy I used from the last case study, of before I match exactly his stance, I maker a small distracting movement then match his so I don’t get caught.
I haven’t discussed this part of rapport yet, but it’s important to know that rapport alone is not persuasion.
Getting rapport is the first step and then you use that rapport to direct and lead the subject. One way to test for this is once you have paced for a while, you test by making a new unique body movement and see if the match you. That’s a sign of rapport.
I didn’t think I had rapport but what surprised me the most was that he began following me, and started matching my body movements!?
So I then started throwing in some commands and suggestions.
He was a little tense in his shoulders, and I told him it’s okay to relax and get comfortable, even really comfortable.
He said “yeah”, and dropped his shoulders and relaxed.
That’s all really cool for sake of practicing covert hypnosis, but there was no use he wasn’t a buyer. I could tell as soon as he walked in.
At least I got to mess with him a little >:-)
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in NLP, Rapport, Sales, body language, persuasion | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
This is case study 4 and 5 of The Great Rapport Experiment of 2008: Matching and Mirroring Edition. This is an experiment in persuasion to see what methods of influence work best in the real world. These are all true stories and all subjects are real.
The concept of matching and mirroring is not a new breakthrough in persuasion; it’s been around since the seventies. Because it’s been around so long, matching and mirroring is common knowledge amongst many sales people, and business people. I have met furniture salesmen, realtors, even actors who never even have heard of NLP or the term covert hypnosis yet they know about matching and mirroring.
Because of this, it is rare, but possible to get caught.
Here are some tips to prevent getting caught.
This subject in this case study was a business man in fact he was making business deals and was focused on an important business call as he was shopping around
I did notice that as I tried to mirror him, by crossing my arms and crossing my legs, which he immediately shifted his position as if he knew what I was doing.
This all happened very quickly, and he may have reacted unconsciously, but the bottom line is this method lost it’s effect obviously in this situation either because he knew what I was doing or he just felt it was strange.
I can critique myself and say that I may have looked too much at the area I was matching. Knocking myself in the head, because this should be obvious but it is easy to forget THEY CAN SEE WHERE YOUR EYES GO!
Case Study 4 lesson:
Don’t obvious look at the area you are matching or mirroring.
If they fold their arms, don’t look at their arms and then fold yours, you will seem creepy and weird. Use your sensory acuity, which means use your peripheral vision to see what they are doing without directly looking at their movements.
Rapport Case Study 5:
The Subject in this case study was in my opinion an obviously unqualified prospect, lady came in asking about something our company doesn’t even provide. Normally I wouldn’t waist my time with her but, for the sake of the rapport experiment, I said screw it and began matching the way she was standing and I noticed something.
No breath taking results, but I did get some new insights on how not to get caught:
How to not get caught:
Move for a reason! People ALWAYS move for a reason, whether unconscious or a conscious reason, the movement is usually a refection of some internal state or thought shift. If you fold your arms for seemingly no reason AT ALL (except because you are trying to create rapport), people will pick up on this and then you are mentally projecting phoniness and lack of congruity, and it will just seem weird.
Instead make it seem like you are moving for a reason. You can do this by making another small gesture that perhaps caused the next gesture which is the matching you are doing.
Any slight movement to distract them from your mirroring them would do the trick.
If she folds her arms and then you fold yours right away for what seems to be no reason it will seem strange. If she folds here arms and you roll up your sleeves and then fold your arms it will seem more natural.
Another example would be if she puts her hands on her hips, perhaps you could tuck in a bit of the excessive fabric from your shirt around your waistline, and then put your hands on your hips.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in NLP, Rapport, Sales, body language, persuasion | No Comments »
Saturday, January 12th, 2008
This is case study 3 of The Great Rapport Experiment of 2008: Matching and Mirroring Edition. This is an experiment in persuasion to see what methods of influence work best in the real world. These are all true stories and all subjects are real.
Young hip guy with a really strong frame comes in my store. He comes in trying to lead me around the store right away. The only strategy used was matching, and it didn’t seem to get me into rapport with him. I matched the way he held his hands and the way he sat. There was no anti-rapport, it was not that he didn’t like me; we just were not in rapport.
You can tell when you are not in rapport when someone talks to you resisting eye contact, or consistently turns their head or focus away from you, or if they move away from you as you move in closer, a lot of times they interrupt you when you are talking.
It is cases like this that will fuel the conclusion that matching and mirroring is simply not enough. This is where being flexible in your abilities and your approach come in, not everyone can be persuaded the same way, you can’t get rapport with everyone the same way.
Case Study 3 Results:
No rapport in response to matching and mirroring, at least not a high enough level to effectively persuade. He said he would think about my offer and come back. What I believe would have been helpful in this case would have been if I matched his laid back “hip” rhythm.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in Rapport, Sales, body language, persuasion | No Comments »
Saturday, January 12th, 2008
There is some controversy in the persuasion community about memorized language patterns.
Canned or memorized language patterns are like covert hypnosis routines. They are a prepared sequence of language patterns, embedded commands, and other types of hypnotic language that you memorize then repeat when you are in a situation of persuasion.
Naturally, you can see why this is popular in the seduction and pick up communities. A guy can walk up to a woman parrot some hypnotic language he read in a book, and if done properly can capture and lead a woman’s imagination to emotional states of attraction and arousal, even lust.
Is this manipulation? Maybe and maybe not, because there are different ways to use these types of language patterns.
Canned language patterns can be used to make someone feel wonderful or they can be used to get someone to do something that may not be for their highest good. Therefore, I say it all depends on the intent of the person using the language pattern.
My motto of all persuasion and covert hypnosis is if you are NOT looking out for the other person’s best interests then you are being manipulative.
Some persuasion gurus teach their students memorized language patterns, as training wheels until they make up their own. Here is an example I just made up, that I could give to writers as a canned pattern, as always I highlight the embedded commands:
You are on the internet, exploring this blog, and reading this article, and it’s interesting because that reminds me of this article I read the other day in readers digest. The author was talking about how there are different ways to read things. I mean, have you ever thought about the difference between just reading something and really absorbing something.
Reading something is easy, we do that all day all the time, it’s an important way to gather information, but often we forget what we read or skim to the parts that are most important.
But absorbing information is really fascinating, it’s like you are reading this article, and all of a sudden you read something that really causes you to pay attention to the information being presented. And it’s not only because this read is fascinating isn’t it because on one hand a part of you begins to become even more aware of the underlying message such that you place all your focus on this message, to the point where you just STOP and imagine all the ways you will be using this information in ways that makes you feel really good. Now as you do that it becomes even more easy to see compelling imaginary experiences in your mind that allow you to feel really good about what you’re learning now to the point where you imagine a time in the future years from now smiling and looking back on this article as being the platform of your journey to masterful persuasion.
Now, you can probably already see the most basic problem with this method. Obviously this is an extreme example, and I would never use something so obviously filled with hypnotic language in my normal writing. But if it were a piece that I was using as material, what happens when everyone else writing an article copies it?
Another problem with memorized patterns is if all you rely on is things you have memorized you will eventually run out of material. So if you are looking to create a long term relationship with a client or a person, then you will later seem incongruent when you talked a certain way initially and then you stopped.
I personally think canned language patterns are excellent training wheels for beginners, and always great examples of hypnotic language that can be used to model your own unique covert hypnotic language patterns after. I still use a few that I have memorized, but I never use memorized language patterns alone.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted in Language Patterns, Persuasion 101, covert hypnosis, persuasion | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 11th, 2008
This is case study 2 of The Great Rapport Experiment of 2008: Matching and Mirroring Edition. This is an experiment in persuasion to see what methods of influence work best in the real world. These are all true stories and all subjects are real.
This was an interesting case study, I have to say, but I did cheat and use another technique, I know the rules of the experiment were to use only matching and mirroring as a means to get rapport so to have a fair study on the effectiveness of matching and mirroring.
A man came in with his daughter. One of the first things he told me was he was not going to buy, which is always interesting when someone says that before they even see their offer.
Anyway, what was unique this time was I did something I never did before. Not only did I match his body movements, specifically the way he was sitting with his legs crossed. But he did have a small piece of paper in his hands that he was carrying in his right hand, and he was waiving it around as he spoke.
So what I did was go to my desk and pick up a brochure and put it in my same hand, interestingly enough he never asked why I got that or what it was for, I just carried it in my right hand as he did and waived it around when I spoke too.
How I Cheated:
One of the constraints of The Great Rapport Experiment of 2008 was I had to use only matching and mirroring by means of getting rapport. In this case study cheated by matching his Middle Eastern accent a tad too.
I don’t know if it was the matching the movements or matching the voice, or it was the bold move of having random paper in my hand.
But this guy fell in love with me.
We had rapport, he was telling me his life story, and we were laughing like old friends. I thought the guy as going to offer me his daughter.
He said he was just looking and wasn’t going to buy, but he ended up placing two orders. Then he went across the street to buy me some coffee!!!
I’ll try not to cheat next time guys 
Case Study 2 Results:
Strong rapport achieved through matching and mirroring. I probably shouldn’t count this one because I cheated my adding my sneaky accent matching (which I am really good at by the way) but I will include this in the study because I came up with the mirroring the item held in his hands.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in NLP, Rapport, Sales, body language, persuasion | No Comments »
Friday, January 11th, 2008
This is case study 1 of The Great Rapport Experiment of 2008: Matching and Mirroring Edition. This is an experiment in persuasion to see what methods of influence work best in the real world. These are all true stories and all subjects are real.
A couple and my first case study for The Great Rapport Experiment of 2008 walked into my store today.
I remember reading in an NLP book from long ago that if there are two people who do you match, the dominant one, the one who is in charge of the two. It sometimes is the male, sometimes it is the women, and it can vary depending on the purchase.
In this case, the gentleman was the one leading the conversation and his wife was quieter and obviously looked to him for direction, so I matched him. I began matching his movements. I was sitting like he was, and placing my hands in the same way as he was. It was interesting because as I matched him, I did notice feel the rapport and the trust increase. He began to warm up to me, and we laughed together, we talked about things other than my product.
Quick Side-Note: In sales if you have to bring something up off topic because you are trying to make conversation, like “so, how about them Lakers?” or “what’s up with this weather huh?” it usually comes off as trite, insincere, and you will also look like you ran out of things to say. But more importantly, you don’t have rapport and making small talk is a poor method to attain rapport.
But when the person you are trying to persuade brings something up that is off topic then you have rapport, they just want to chat with you means they like you.
The really interesting thing was that as I matched the gentlemen and the rapport with us increased, I noticed his wife adjust her movements and rhythms to match ours. By that time, we were all in rapport, interesting.
Rapport Case Study 1 Results:
Rapport was created through what would appear to be matching and mirroring. The technique of creating rapport with two people by matching the dominant person in the relationship, would appear based on this case study to be worthy of further investigating and experimentation.
Update a Week Later, Client Returns:
At the end of the presentation, these clients said they would come back within a week, with the person they were shopping for.
Naturally whenever someone says that it could be B.S. but I let them go.
They did come back, just as they said they would, and they placed an order. The really interesting thing is that I did not intentionally match or mirror him this time because I already had the rapport, that I noticed that as we interacted, I looked down and we were matching each other!
It has been said that when you are in rapport with someone you naturally match and or mirror each other, this case study would support that claim. Next time you are with your best friend or someone you love notice your movements and see if you are moving and gesturing as that person does.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Posted in Rapport, body language | No Comments »
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
The New Year is a good time to start new goals and new experiments. This year I will be doing a series of persuasion and covert hypnosis related experiments, and publish them here for all of us to learn from.
What better topic to start with than rapport?
Rapport is one of the most important ingredients in the persuasion recipe. And it is what you need to get first in order to go onto the other sneaky hypnosis stuff.
Get rapport or get out.
So we kick off the New Year with what I will call “The Great Rapport Experiment of 2008″.
I am going to experiment with one of the classic NLP strategies that you probably already know of.
She Approached Him!?
I was in Las Vegas two years ago at persuasion seminar. Some of the seminar attendees and I were in the main lobby of The Luxor Hotel having a few drinks, and across the room was a lovely woman socializing with her friends. One of the attendees Mark, a less than strikingly handsome, gentleman from Canada was sitting chatting with us. When all of a sudden the women walked across the room and began to chat up Mark.
As Mark’s new female friend went to buy him a drink, Mark gave me that sneaky wink that most persuasion artists give each other to let their colleagues know they are using a persuasion strategy.
Naturally, I was dying to know what the hell he did to get a beautiful stranger to walk across the room and introduce herself!
He said matching and mirroring.
I heard stories like this and my bull sh*t detector goes haywire, but witnessing the results did silence my B.S. detector a bit.
I’m still skeptical though, so this months experiment is going to be on matching and mirroring.
Matching and Mirroring
You probably already know that matching and mirroring is mimicking the breathing, posture, movement and speech tempo of the person you are persuading. The theory behind it is that, when the unconscious mind sees that you are moving like them that you are “like them” and can be trusted. This “likeness” can create a trust and bond that will open the doors for effective persuasion.
Matching and mirroring is my least favorite rapport building strategy because in the past it seemed, to me, to be the least consistent of the rapport gaining strategies. On top of that, it seems to take longer to gain rapport Since I read a basic NLP book years ago there have been a lot of developments that have lead to some advanced methods that I have found to be more effective. (Don’t worry I’ll do an experiment on those too eventually)
I know some persuasion teachers, like Tom and Kim of essential skills, have thrown matching and mirroring out of their persuasion model completely. Tom always tells the story:
“Somebody gave some professor $200,000 to walk around and mirror people. For $200,000 this is what they found out. If you are already in rapport with someone mirroring increased that rapport slightly. If you did not have rapport with someone, mirroring irritated them.” –Tom Vizzini Essential Skills
On the other hand you have Kenrick Cleveland, who many people in the NLP, covert hypnosis, and persuasion community refer to as “better than Bandler” Kenrick swears by matching an mirroring. If you attend one of his seminars you will hear him say “when they move, you move” at least a dozen times.
Here’s The Deal:
I am going to get to the bottom of the great matching and mirroring debate myself and experiment with matching and mirroring.
I am going to try to get rapport with people 100 different people in business/ sales and social settings using matching and mirroring alone. Experiments produce best results in a sterile environment, so I will not use any other rapport strategies while I am testing matching and mirroring.
I will publish the type of setting, the type of subject, the results (or lack of results) as well as any new insights I learned. At the end we will have 100 different experiments, and that should give an excellent resource whether or not you want to use matching and mirroring in your persuasion artist repertoire.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in NLP, Rapport, body language, persuasion | No Comments »
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
Photo Credit Class
Home study courses and books on persuasiona nd covert hypnosis will only get you so far, if you really want to make persuasion a part of who you are rather than something you are “doing” to someone you will want to find yourself at a live seminar.
At the time of this writing have been myself to live events with Kenrick Cleveland, Ross Jeffries, and Mark Cunningham. These were all different seminars and were all money well spent, so I can’t say one was better than another. But I will say that Kendrick’s training was what most inspired me to become masterful at persuasion.
I will also note that if you are a “noob” to NLP, hypnosis, and covert hypnosis, before you go to Ross Jeffries seminar; do yourself a favor and get his home study course first and three months of practice. It’s not a pre-requisite, but the material is pretty advanced and you will get more out of the “live” material.
Sure live seminars cost more, but the ability to ask the expert questions in real time, and the practice, the drills, the networking with other students you can’t put a price tag on.
The Mistake I Made in Regards To Persuasion Seminars:
Don’t make the mistake I made early on and ask a persuasion guru what they think of another persuasion guru, you will more often than not get a negative response. Many of them used to work together and had falling outs.
All respect my persuasion mentors and idols, the bickering and mudslinging in this industry rivals the maturity of an elementary school food fight.
Take my advice, learn all you can from who ever you can and step toward persuasion mastery, stay out of the NLP turf wars.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Posted in Events, persuasion | No Comments »
Saturday, January 5th, 2008
Joining news groups online that discuss persuasion is a great way to learn covert hypnosis online. You will want to take full advantage of the wealth of information available in these groups, not only from being able to ask questions and get feedback from fellow persuasion artist and (a few masters), but some of the “Guru” types even give you some tips.
I am a member of the following yahoo groups:
Mindlist:
Mindlist is one of the oldest and largest communities in yahoo in the realm of persuasion, hypnosis, and NLP. If you search their archives there are a lot of old posts that have better info than you would find in many books. The only downside is that Mindlist is not as active as it was back in the day, as many of the really good contributors left. Also the subject material is so broad that you get a lot of new-agey-hippie types talking about some strange off the wall topics.
Essential Skills:
The experts in sneaky stuff you could use on the streets today would be Tom Vizzini and Kim McFarland. I’m not especially crazy about Tom’s teaching personality, but the quality his content is excellent and his methods on rapport and anchoring are backed by positive reviews across the net. Tom and Kim have seminars in Atlanta every fall. If conditions permit I am planning on attending their rapport/ anchoring boot camp this year.
The yahoo group Essential Skills is the Tom and Kim reside on the net, to discuss the topics they teach in their essential skills seminars. Topics typically include rapport, anchoring, visualization, tonality, and calibration. This topic is more active than Mindlist and more on topic with persuasion. The only downside to this group is that lately I’ve noticed constant bickering and arguing over different persuasion personal development philosophies.
Speed Seductionlist
Ross Jeffries. This guy is so popular, I probably don’t need to say anything other than if you want to learn seduction join the speedseductionlist. The main theme obviously is seduction, but I have learned persuasion strategies in the seduction realm that I have been able to transpose into sales and other non-seduction social settings.
Marknosis
Mark Cunningham is one of the most successful hypnotist trainers in America. He has received a lot of fame from his work with Ross Jeffries in the seduction community about a decade ago. Now most of his work and trainings consist of training clinical hypnotists and hypnotic persuasion.
The group is called Marknosis and I like this group. It’s conservative in size, and because of that the information is a lot more target toward hypnosis and covert hypnosis. I joined a few months ago, and I like what I have seen. From time to time Mark posts homework assignments about hypnosis and personal development
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in Hypnosis, NLP, Persuasion 101, covert hypnosis, persuasion | 1 Comment »
Photo Credit: Grand Challenge Equation
Photo Credit: 
Photo Credit: 
Photo Credit: 
Photo Credit 
Photo Credit: 
Photo-Credit: 
